Dead to Rights
by OxEyed
Summary: Tournaments come, tournaments go. A world-class CEO goes missing. Seto reads the papers, goes on with business as usual, and waits. Toonshipping, post-Battle City. For contest.


**Dead to Rights:**

_Caught in the act; guilty as charged. Takes place after Battle City but before DOMA/Memory World, depending on your canon of choice. _

* * *

The rumors started during Battle City.

No one knew who first told the story, or if it had any factual merit, but as with most rumors, sensationalism proved more powerful than truth. And this story _was_ sensational: no one had volunteered to take credit, but _someone_ had seen the fabled inventor of Duel Monsters carried out of his mansion on a stretcher at the close of his last tournament.

There'd been no sign of him since.

The rumors only grew during the subsequent Battle City tournament, stories about the eccentric loner murmured between duels: his obsession with the occult, shady business dealings with the mob, signs of a maddening depression after the death of his late wife, stress exacerbated by business rivals and police inquiries into sexual harassment charges. There was even whispered speculation about conditions at Duelist Kingdom, about duelists suffering from shock, injuries, and abuse from Crawford's hired thugs, about the American champion who'd gone missing after losing to a newcomer at the finals. The most fantastic of these rumors involved a grand conspiracy to trap the players on the island in some kind of gladiator-style fight to the death, but they were all equally unfounded. The players who had come back from the island had, for one reason or another, remained silent on the events of the tournament.

After Battle City ended and the frenzy over new rules and new cards and new champions faded, the rumors gained strength and momentum. It was a matter of months before major newspapers were posting headlines like BELOVED GAME INVENTOR PRESUMED DEAD, INDUSTRIAL ILLUSIONS CEO GOES MISSING, and WHERE IS PEGASUS CRAWFORD?

It was obviously nonsense. Seto Kaiba had never been one to put stock in the fictions newspapers touted as fact. _If_ a body was found, _then_ he might start believing the stories.

One could only hope.

But there was a difference between a good story and a story too good to be true. As much as Seto would have liked to see witnesses emerging with scratchy black-and-white photos of a bloated corpse, he had to accept that most likely, Pegasus was alive somewhere, sipping pinot noir and giggling like a girl over the Sunday comics.

It was even harder to rejoice over a rival's failure when his livelihood directly affected your own. While KaibaCorp's profits had seen a massive rise with the introduction of the Duel Disk and virtual reality technology, its board of directors had proved remarkably opposed to taking the company in a new direction, especially considering what they called "uncertain times".

It was understandable. The first theme park KaibaCorp had built hadn't exactly proved family-friendly, and even Seto had to admit that while his intentions for Death-T hadn't exactly been _misguided_, they'd been, for lack of a better word, _overambitious._

It took weeks of arguing to bully his board into approving the development for a new theme park, but since then the project had done nothing but hit roadblock after roadblock. Every other day some member of his staff was bringing him problems to fix: this design violates safety codes, this land isn't for sale, this architect refuses to work for you. It was irritating, but nothing that couldn't be solved with a long silence and the unspoken threat of unemployment.

It took his legal team three weeks to finally broach the one subject that had been on everyone's mind since day one. In one of their weekly development meetings, Seto had asked to see the concept art for the park entrance and his graphics team has sat in embarrassed silence while his head lawyer had drawn himself up with a gravity that belied his nervousness, his eyes carefully fixed on the paperwork in his hands.

"Ah…sir, it seems the designs you requested could possibly, er, _violate, _our contract with Industrial Illusions."

Seto's hands had been folded on the table in front of him, and now he lifted them as he leaned forward, studying the lawyer over steepled fingers.

"Are you suggesting," he asked, "That I don't know the terms and conditions of a business agreement I spent two months arranging? An agreement I practically _wrote_?"

It wasn't physically possible for the man to go any paler, but he attempted it with considerable aplomb. "Of course not, Mr. Kaiba. It's just that…the idea of a Duel Monsters theme park…we can't possibly…our contract only extended as far as licensing for the Duel Disk, and for the Battle City promotional…this isn't even _close…"_

Across the table, one of the graphic artists twitched in her seat, drawing Seto's attention as easily as if she'd pasted a sign to her forehead reading "Please interrogate _me_ next!" and Seto had no problem complying, glaring the artist down as she shrank into her chair.

"Show me the designs."

There was a collective hush from around the table, every member present sucking in a breath and holding it as the artist slowly lifted a portfolio onto the table and stood up to push it toward him.

He finished the movement for her, grabbing the portfolio and flipping it open, studying each image for only a few seconds before turning to the next one, well aware of the fear that kept the room frozen around him.

He knew exactly what he would find, but it was disappointing to see that the images were actually _good_ despite all that. He looked up again. _She_ knew they were good, too. For a minute Seto wavered between pride and irritation, but he had known this was coming; he couldn't change his plans just because the alternative had proved viable.

He closed the folder and leaned back into his chair. "I believe I was a great deal more specific when I said I wanted _dragons_."

The artist glanced across the table at the lawyer, who avoided her eyes. Helplessly, she turned back to Seto, delivering a firm but obviously rehearsed litany. "I'm sorry, sir, but the Blue Eyes White Dragon isn't our creative property. My team can't incorporate it into our designs until we know that we have rights to the image."

"Then get the rights." He said this to the lawyer, who was looking very studiously at the metalwork on the wall behind Seto's head. "Industrial Illusions will do nothing but profit by giving us access to their brand."

"About that…"

A younger member of the legal staff had come to his senior's defense, and as he stood up and bowed, the head lawyer deflated back into his seat. "We've already approached Industrial Illusions about extending the terms of the contract."

Every single person at the table, save the young lawyer, was looking very carefully at their laps. They were waiting for Seto to ask the obvious question, so he saved them all some time and skipped to the answer.

"Pegasus refused," he said flatly. "Is that it?"

The lawyer's courage had started to flag by now. He glanced at his superior, but he would have gotten more help out of a paper bag by this point. "Well, not quite—it was the vice-president—he said the board couldn't possibly make that kind of decision without the approval of Mr. Crawford, and being as he's missing—"

"He's _what_?"

"Oh, um—surely you've seen the papers—"

Seto let the lawyer stammer out the story for a few seconds while he thought. He knew Pegasus was missing, but for Industrial Illusions to admit it... either Pegasus really _was_ dead and they didn't want to lose leverage by admitting it— or he'd hidden himself so well his own company couldn't find him. Either way, it changed things.

"Very well," he said, cutting the lawyer off mid-sentence. "Everyone out."

It took mere seconds for his staff to quietly shuffle out of the room. In the end, only Mokuba remained, studiously doodling on his agenda in the chair opposite Seto.

They sat in silence for several minutes before Mokuba slapped his pencil down and leaned back, grinning at his brother. "Twenty-two days," he said. "You said it'd take them forty."

"If you remember, I said that with the provision you weren't allowed to goad the staff."

"I didn't!"

"Which one was it? Hamada? Satou?"

"Naoki," Mokuba said grudgingly, naming the younger lawyer. "But I _only_ said that maybe you'd be less angry if they brought it up_ before_ we sunk a lot of money into the park."

"Hm. Now _that_ sounds like goading to me."

"What? Oh come _on_, Seto, you know the only reason they waited this long is because they thought you were already arranging a deal with I²."

"That's their mistake, not mine," Seto said, but he relented all the same. "How much did we say this time? Three thousand?"

"Try _five_," Mokuba said. "_And_ you'll go to the arcade with me on Saturday."

"You have the exact same games at the house."

"It's not the same. The arcade gives you prizes."

"You won't get anywhere if you let yourself be motivated by _prizes_."

Mokuba made a face at him, but Seto was looking at the concept art again.

"You could make a case for public domain," Mokuba said. "Right? Because of that Egyptian exhibit? It proved Duel Monsters is thousands of years old."

"It's a few scratches on some rocks," Seto said. "Not enough to make a viable case. And we're not going to take this to court." The public had already grown to associate KaibaCorp with Duel Monsters, and a product that looked like the cooperative effort of two companies would fare better than one that looked like the battered child of divorce. After Death-T, he couldn't afford that kind of press.

"It could be a trap," Mokuba said. "Pegasus, I mean. He's probably just waiting for you to come after him."

Seto appreciated Mokuba's effort to give him a way out, but he didn't see that he had much of a choice. They could wait years for Pegasus to rear his dandified head, but so long as he wanted to move forward with KaibaLand, they didn't have that luxury.

In some ways, this might be better. If Seto was going to treat with a psychopath, he might as well it without the world looking over his shoulder.

He opened his laptop. "Get Isono in here," he said. "I'm going to need the jet prepared."

"You're leaving?" Mokuba got up to buzz the secretary and then crossed the room to peer over Seto's shoulder. "Do you even know where he is?"

"I'll find him."

"How?"

"Asking." Seto pulled up the satellite feeds and began to write a few emails. The man might be missing, but Seto doubted anyone knew how to _look_. Pegasus owned several private islands and at least two homes in America, and those properties had to be staffed and supplied with someone who had seen _something_. People who had seen something would say anything, at the right price.

Mokuba watched him for a few seconds. "Can I come?"

"You have school."

"_You_ don't go to school." Which was true; Seto had stopped going to school after the business with the coma. But it was an excuse poor enough that it didn't merit acknowledgment, so Seto ignored Mokuba, hoping to spur him to come up with a slightly more persuasive argument.

Catching the hint, Mokuba sidled closer and dropped his voice. "Aren't you worried about my safety?"

Seto gave it a moment's thought. "I'm sure you can handle yourself."

When he looked up again, he saw that Mokuba was trying not to laugh.

"Geez," he said. "I guess you really _are_ cold-blooded."

Seto smiled at his brother, shutting his laptop just as Isono came through the door. "Just keep an eye on the board for me while I'm gone," he said. "No coups this time."

It took less than an hour for Seto to make arrangements to leave the country, and only another hour after that for one of his many cautious inquiries to yield some fruit: the head of Pegasus' security staff; an ex-cop named Croquet, had booked lodgings in a San Francisco hotel not three months earlier. Industrial Illusion's main branch was located there, but of more interest to Seto was the stretch of beachfront property a few hundred miles away owned by that very same security guard, who had, coincidentally, been missing ever since his employer had disappeared.

The flight took eleven hours, plus another two to find an adequate car dealership open in the middle of the night. By the time Seto arrived, it was nearly five in the morning.

The road led him onto a long wooded driveway that went up a steep incline until the trees abruptly thinned out and he reached a plateau. A row of buildings, most of them vacation homes, lined a gravel road, and beyond them was nothing but sky, and Seto realized that he'd reached the top of a cliff.

At the tail end of autumn, every building was abandoned; the sole exception being a salt-weathered two-story bungalow with a Roadster parked in the driveway. When he saw it, Seto found an abandoned-looking cottage and pulled the car under an overhang where it wouldn't be immediately seen.

He waited for over an hour, lightly dozing as the sky gradually lightened from black to murky grey, the heavy clouds in the sky indicating that if it wasn't going to be a stormy day, it was at least going to be a grim one. When he finally heard the murmur of an engine, he nearly mistook it for the ocean until it was nearly gone.

He sat up and peered down the road at the disappearing car, catching a brief glimpse of a dark head of hair attached to a suit in the driver's seat. Seto had no way of being sure, but still he was certain that it was the security guard in question. Now it was a matter of seeing if he had company. Seto waited a few minutes to see if the man was actually gone for good, then got out of the car. He'd only brought his briefcase with him, but he paused long enough to retrieve the pistol from inside and transfer it to the inside of his coat. Pegasus might be more useful to Seto alive than dead, but there was no point taking unnecessary risks.

He approached the bungalow from a distance, walking on the far side of the road and looking for any signs of additional security. Pegasus might have been a simpering idiot, but he had always been remarkably well-prepared. When he saw nothing he deemed dangerous, Seto tightened his hold on his briefcase and strode up the porch steps.

The door had once been white, but the paint had long since been stripped away. Seto expected it to be locked, but when he found otherwise, he opened it wide enough to slip inside before he closed it again, listening for any signs of life. Down the hall, he could see a faint yellow light, and a few seconds later, he heard footsteps.

He waited, but they didn't come any closer, just started and stopped a few times before he heard the scrape of a chair against the floor. A few seconds more and finally heard what he was listening for; the erratic, absentminded humming of a man who believed himself completely alone.

Seto followed the hall to an archway that evidently connected the living area to the kitchen. Pegasus sat at the kitchen table, drinking out of a mug as he flipped the page on what Seto guessed was a dime-store mystery novel. He looked out of place in the tiny kitchen, like a peacock in a henhouse, and even in a terrycloth bathrobe and house slippers there was no hiding the erect posture that distinguished the upper echelon of society, the air of casual command and easy relaxation, the instant, almost dismissive way he glanced toward the doorway. Seto was at least mollified to see that he'd managed to shock him; Pegasus sputtered into his drink as he realized who he was looking at, his affected Japanese giving way to a coarser American accent in the shock of the moment.

"Kaiba,_" _he said hoarsely.

"Pegasus." Seto couldn't have enjoyed this moment more. It had always been hard to surprise Pegasus, but that only made it more worthwhile. There were not many sights he wanted to see more at the moment that the sight of his ex-rival (and current enemy) sitting at his kitchen table in a bathrobe, mouth slack with astonishment. "You're supposed to be dead."

To his credit, Pegasus recovered marvelously, his expression closing off as he ducked his head, smoothing out his hair, glancing past Seto into the hallway. "You don't say," he murmured. Whatever he was looking for in the hall didn't appear, and he turned his attention back to Seto, his gaze somber. "You've come to finish the job, I suppose."

Seto didn't reply immediately. He was studying Pegasus, trying to determine just _what_ had happened to the man in his convalescence. The rumor about the eye must have been true, at least. He saw no sign of the gaudy obscenity that had been there before, but the way Pegasus wasn't looking at him directly confirmed it.

He looked thinner, Seto realized. Paler. Thin white legs, bones jutting out at the ankles and wrists. To be fair, he'd only ever seen Pegasus in thickly-padded suits in the past, but you could see it in the face, in the hollowed cheekbones, in the dark spaces under the eyes—eye.

Seto crossed the room and slammed his briefcase on the table, noting the minute twitch of Pegasus' fingers. "I've _come_," he said. "To do business."

He didn't wait for Pegasus to reply; he sat down and opened the briefcase. "You're going to need to get your board of directors in line. They absolutely refused to treat with KaibaCorp without your express approval."

"Ah," Pegasus said. "How prudent of you, to track me down directly." He leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs, lifted his chin, and suddenly it was as if he hadn't changed at all. It was all Seto had expected: remove a man from his business, but you can't remove the business from the man. "You do realize of course, dear boy, that there's no way I'm going to conduct business with you."

"Don't be ridiculous. You haven't even heard—"

"Why should I?" Pegasus said smoothly. "I'm not sure if you've noticed, but I've not been conducting my affairs from a beach house."

"That's not a problem. You won't be here much longer."

"Oh?" Pegasus raised a slender eyebrow. "Is that a threat?"

"It's a_ guarantee."_

"I fail to see how barging in on a man at six in the morning and waving paperwork in the air is going to achieve that kind of result."

Seto thought he'd been prepared for Pegasus' brand of banter; he'd been wrong. He willed himself not to grind his teeth and focused. It was all empty talk, anyway. "What would you prefer?" he asked. "That we do this at gunpoint?"

Pegasus waved a dismissive hand. "It would certainly be less surprising," he said. "After all, Kaiba-boy, it wouldn't be the first time you've resorted to brute force to get what you want."

He looked _smug_, the bastard. "I'm sure what I have in mind will prove more effective."

To Seto's complete and utter irritation, Pegasus started to laugh.

"Now that's more like it," he said, pressing frail fingers against his mouth to hide a smile. "I always did think you were more suited to blackmail than murder. But I'm afraid it won't work. I'm a man with nothing to lose."

"You have _plenty_ to lose."

"Do I? Enlighten me, Kaiba-boy: what do you have in mind? It is my company? My life? Unfortunately, I'm past the point of caring about those trivialities."

Seto watched Pegasus take a sip from the mug. It was a chipped affair, speckled off-white with the words DAMN I'M GOOD plastered on the side. Behind him, raindrops had started to spatter against the kitchen window. As if in answer to the weather, the kitchen light had started to flicker.

Seto didn't know how Pegasus could stand it.

"You're lying."

Pegasus waggled an eyebrow at him over the rim of the mug. "Oh?" he said. "You'd better explain yourself. It's not as if I can't read your mind."

There was an "_anymore_" floating unsaid in the space between them, but Seto ignored it. "I don't have to blackmail you at all," he said. "Because the public will do it for me."

He could see in the tensing of Pegasus' shoulders that he understood immediately what Seto was driving at, but he continued. He didn't come all this way to make _implications_. "You aren't here because you have nothing left to lose. The world might not know just what happened during that travesty you called a tournament, but they'll know guilt when they see it, and as soon as I tell the press where you are—and you can be certain I will—they'll drag you kicking and screaming into the public eye, where the _only_ way you can prove to them that you have nothing to hide is by cooperating fully with _me._ Otherwise, I'll let every witness I've kept quiet drag your sorry carcass through courts from here to Tokyo until there's not a place on Earth where you won't be hounded by publicity hounds, where strangers won't spit on you or throw rocks through your windows. You will never have a waking moment alone for the rest of your life, and I won't have to lift a finger."

It took Pegasus a long time to lift his gaze from where it was fixed on surface of the linoleum table. "Well, Kaiba-boy," he said mildly. "I have to admit, you craft a far more compelling argument than Croquet."

"Good," Seto said stonily, not moving as Pegasus chuckled and stood up.

"Well, I may as well call him back," he said. "I'm sure he'll be appalled to find out that you slipped past his _extensive_ security measures."

Suspecting that the comment was some form of sarcasm, Seto ignored it altogether. Instead he watched as Pegasus glided to the counter and pulled an ancient phone off its receiver. He curled the cord around his finger as he leaned back, dialing a number with a lazy elegance that fooled no one.

"Croquet," he said into the phone. "It's time to go home." He looked Seto in the eye. Smiled. Behind him, the rain started to pour. "The jig is up."

* * *

Seto didn't hear from Pegasus for the next three weeks. He didn't need to. The newspapers were aflame with headlines regarding the CEO's revival from the dead. He resumed control of Industrial Illusions within days of Seto's visit, managing the ensuing press release with his customary grace and polish. He explained his absence away as a sabbatical reserved "for health reasons" and fielded most of the questions regarding Duelist Kingdom by hinting that if _anything_ out of the ordinary had happened on that island, it had certainly been none of his doing. _After all_, wasn't that missing duelist Keith Howard a known thug?

When Seto sent his lawyers to Industrial Illusions with the contract for use of the Duel Monster brand, they were returned signed and unamended. After news of _that_ merger came out, the papers didn't care about Duelist Kingdom. Fiasco or not, Battle City had brought Domino City to the front of the gaming industry and public faith in KaibaCorp had never been higher.

It was the best Seto could have hoped for, so when one of his secretaries poked her head into his office to tell him that they had "an issue" downstairs, he was more than a little disconcerted.

"Did you tell him to make an appointment?" Not that Seto would have approved one with Pegasus, but still. There were protocols one had to follow. Even a CEO couldn't stop by KaibaCorp's main office and expect an audience with its _Seto Kaiba_.

"He didn't want one, sir."

"…Explain."

"He never asked to speak with you, sir. He's just…he's just standing there, sir."

"Doing _what?_"

"He's…well, he's looking around, sir."

Seto had to stalk down the hallway to the nearest security station so he could see the footage himself. Pegasus was standing in KaibaCorp's main lobby, hands clasped behind his back as he wandered the large room. Seto couldn't see the walls, but he knew what Pegasus was looking at anyway, and that knowledge made that old pain in the pit of his stomach start up again. Other people called that feeling _guilt_; Seto called it useless sentiment, but it didn't make the tension fade.

Pegasus seemed to be alone: there was no sign of his security staff, just a small clump of Seto's employees gathered on one end of the room, no doubt wondering what a world-class CEO was doing in a lobby normally populated by children on field trips and small-time entrepreneurs who couldn't gain an audience with Seto through normal channels.

"Tell me if he does anything else," Seto finally said, and went back to work.

When he called the downstairs lobby an hour later, the secretary nervously informed him that yes, Mr. Crawford was still "lurking around."

He _could_ have left Pegasus there, stayed at the office late, left through any of the other half-dozen exits to the building. He didn't. He went downstairs.

When Seto stepped out of the elevator, Pegasus was standing in front of the wide wall where KaibaCorp displayed plans for future projects. There were several designs of the future park, but the piece Pegasus was standing in front of wasn't architectural. Immediately after receiving the necessary signatures, Seto had his graphics team submit designs for the statue that would eventually grace the main square. His favorite he'd commissioned as a large-scale painting and mounted in the main lobby. When the park was completed he planned to move the painting to his office, but for the present it belonged to the future and therefore to his entire staff.

The image was stark, painted with bold lines and cold colors; trapping a living image of the Blue Eyes White Dragon, her body curled around the spire of a skyscraper, her neck arched, her jaws wide as she screamed triumphantly into the night air. The idea of letting the public see it had felt invasive; letting Pegasus see it felt like torture.

When Seto approached, Pegasus turns slightly to nod, his eye lighting up with an unfounded familiarity. "Ah," he says. "There you are. I knew curiosity would get the better of you."

"What do you want?"

"Allow a man his whims, Kaiba-boy. I was admiring your handiwork." He turned back to the painting. "Or your staff's, to be precise. It's a marvelous likeness."

He turned back to Seto, a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. "What are you paying your artists these days, Kaiba-boy? Any chance I could outbid you?"

Seto forced himself to let the comment slide. Yes, his blood might be boiling at the thought of Pegasus poaching one of his staff members, but if he lost his temper this conversation would be a failure before it'd even started. "Did you come here to sightsee, or do you have another reason for wasting my time?"

"And here I thought you might have learned a bit of tact these last few months." Pegasus turned to face him. He'd resumed wearing the extravagant suits, but they hung on his body with somewhat more slack than they used to. "I've been rethinking this contract of ours, Kaiba-boy."

Immediately Seto was on his guard. "You're not amending it."

"Have no fear, my boy! You know I'd never let my business partners down. But perhaps an extension is in order." Pegasus shrugged with a nonchalance he didn't possess; Seto's skin started to crawl. "Let's say…a permanent one."

"What are you saying?"

"Surely you understand _business, _Kaiba-boy, but if I must be frank, I will: if you want the rights to my game so badly, why don't you just buy it?"

Pegasus took a step forward, but Seto didn't move. He felt as if he'd been nailed in place.

"…How much?"

"Name your price."

"No."

"Oh, don't play coy with me, Kaiba-boy. I'm finding myself in a very agreeable mood today."

"I'm not going to argue with you."

"What's there to argue?" Pegasus spread his hands expansively. "This isn't a fight anymore: it's a surrender."

"It's _ludicrous_," Seto snapped. "Now get out of my building."

As he turned to leave, Pegasus caught him by the arm, his fingers clenching in the fabric of Seto's shirt. His voice was low, his gaze fixed on Seto's face. "Listen here, Kaiba," he said. "Everyone one knows who won this war. Take your prize and leave me alone."

This close, Seto could see just how tired he was; the circles under Pegasus' eyes had only grown darker over time, the perfectly coiffed appearance fraying at the edges, the desperation quivering mildly at the corner of his mouth.

Seto tugged his arm free. "Get out of my building," he repeated. "And don't _ever_ touch me again."

He didn't look back as he stalked out of the lobby, but later Mokuba told him that Pegasus stayed for another twenty minutes before the secretary had the nerve to ask him to leave.

"Why didn't you just take the deal?" Mokuba asked, draped over the back of a chair in Seto's office. "You think it was a trap?"

"No," Seto muttered darkly, never looking up from his computer. "I'm just not done with him yet."

Mokuba was tracing shapes in the leather cushions. They'd gone through this song and dance before. "Seto…" he said, with just enough of a catch in his voice to make his brother pay attention. "This isn't…this isn't some kind of revenge thing, is it?"

Seto regarded his brother silently, Some part of him wanted to say yes, just to see what Mokuba would do, but most of him just wanted to let the question go unanswered. What would be the point of trying to explain just what he'd intended, what he'd expected, what he'd wanted? Seto didn't dwell, he _did. _It was motion, not motive, that moved the world.

Mokuba's wrists extended past his shirt sleeves; he was going through another growth spurt. Seto turned back to the computer.

"Of course not," he said finally. "This is business."

Weeks passed. Autumn ended and winter began. Developments for KaibaLand moved forward. Seto found that once he'd wrangled Industrial Illusions onboard, his directors stopped bringing him problems, stopped subtly suggesting that the park might be a failure. They didn't bat an eye when he told them how many children would be allowed in for free, and they practically cheered when he announced he'd be holding another tournament for the grand opening.

He kept his eye on the papers. For the most part, they were full of the usual drivel, but what Seto noticed, because he was looking, was that Industrial Illusion's stock was slowly falling, that the company was functioning without _producing_, that its CEO appeared rarely in the press releases and even more rarely in public.

Sometimes he thought that he should have taken Pegasus up on his offer, but more often he thought that maybe he should have brought the issue to court after all. Then maybe he could have experienced all his disappointment at once instead of stretching it out over months of waiting.

When he asked his marketing team, they told him that Industrial Illusions hadn't released a new card since before Duelist Kingdom, but yes_,_ _of course_ exclusive booster packs would be a great promotion to the park.

He made time in his schedule and flew to California. The headquarters of Industrial Illusions were nothing like the KaibaCorp tower: it was an immense, ancient brick building with gothic arches, victorian latticework, and grecian colonnades, a mishmash of every Western architectural style save the modern ones. In the lobby, the secretary stared at him over the screen of ancient machine barely qualified to be called a computer. She frowned when he demanded to see the CEO, coldly informing him that Pegasus wasn't receiving visitors "at this time."

Seto was already striding toward the elevators. "He'll make an exception for me."

She didn't try to stop him. Neither did the security guards lounging in the lobby of the top floor, although one did half-jump out of his chair before his companion pulled him back, which gave Seto some hope. At least _someone_ in this company knew how he ought to be treated.

Pegasus was lounging behind his desk, leaning back into the chair, a glass of wine in one hand, a book open in the other. Seto didn't look closely enough to see what kind of book it was. He didn't want to know. At this point, he had a feeling that if it was anything short of _The Art of War_, he'd turn around and walk right back out.

He didn't bother to sit down, just slapped a portfolio of paperwork down on the lush mahogany surface of the desk. "I want exclusive boosters for the opening."

Pegasus had regarded his entrance without moving, and now he simply glanced back down at his book. "That sounds like a perfectly _superb_ idea, Kaiba-boy," he said. "I wish you luck."

"_You're _designing the cards."

"I'm afraid not," Pegasus didn't even look up. "I don't design anymore. I'm strictly business now."

"Then have your design staff do it."

"What design staff? I don't have design staff."

"…_What?"_

Pegasus flipped a page. "I shut the thing down, Kaiba-boy. Wasn't making a profit."

"That's-" _Not possible. _Duel Monsters was Industrial Illusion's biggest seller. Either Pegasus was insane or he was purposely driving his company into the ground. Up until today, Seto thought he had known which one it was. Now he wasn't sure. Only his rage kept him motionless; it took him several seconds just to bring himself to continue speaking. "Open the department," he managed, spitting the words out behind grinding teeth. "Immediately."

Slowly, Pegasus looked up at him. "Whose company is it?" he said, his words all the more potent for the careful quiet with which he said them. "Answer carefully, Kaiba-boy. The future of Industrial Illusions depend on it."

"For the last time, I don't want your company!" Seto snapped. "I want your _business."_

"But this _is_ business," Pegasus said, "It's not difficult to predict the future, Kaiba-boy. I'm just helping it along." He gestured expansively with both hands as he spoke, and the hand which held the wine wavered, a few drops swirling to the edge of the glass and over the rim, splattering blood-red against the desk. Except for what Seto had brought with him, the room was empty of anything resembling paperwork.

He spun away and stalked to the window. Outside, the light was already dimming, despite it barely being late afternoon. Heavy velvet curtains kept the room even darker, and for a moment Seto was possessed with the made urge to tear them down. Everything in this building was so _heavy_. It made him sick.

"You're drunk," he said, frowning as his own reflection when Pegasus only laughed.

"No more than usual, dear boy," he said. "Now tell me why you're really here, because I doubt it's to give me this—" he gestured distastefully at Seto's briefcase, "—_homework._"

"…there isn't another reason."

There was no reply from Pegasus, and Seto's fingers tightened into a fist as an arc of pain shot down his spine. He had to remind himself to relax, to lower his shoulders, loosen his fingers. Mokuba was always accusing him of internalizing stress; he'd have a field day if he knew what Seto was going through now.

_It's fine, _he told himself. _He's being deliberately difficult_._ That's all this is. Just more mind games_. _Same story as always._

"We used to have such fun, didn't we?"

Pegasus was leaning over the desk, picking mournfully through the portfolio Seto had brought him. "You used to think up the most _fantastic_ insults. It was a joy getting you to lose your temper."

"What are you doing?"

"Reminiscing." Pegasus lifted a piece of paper and pursed his lips. "_More_ dragon cards? Trite."

"Dragons sell."

"So, so, so. It's just what they'll expect from you."

"You think I care?"

"I wouldn't dare assume _that_, Kaiba-boy. Couch it as it a simple observation." Pegasus tossed the paper back down. "There are some excellent ideas in there. I'm sure your staff is more than capable of designing the cards themselves."

"_You _have to do it."

"Why?"

Seto took a deep, terrible breath and resisted the urge to pound his hands on the table. It served to intimidate his lower-level employees, but it always had the opposite effect on anyone who'd ever had to do it themselves. They knew the action sprung out of sheer desperation. "Because," he said. "I didn't drag you into the world to be a _coward_."

"Then one has to wonder why you did," Pegasus said evenly, his eye narrowed. "Because take my word for it, Kaiba-boy, the last thing I'm going to do is give you the satisfaction of watching me _struggle_." He lifted at his glass, as if to take another drink, but instead he paused, peering at Seto through the distortion.

Behind that thick curtain of hair, Seto thought, there was a hole where an eye used to be. He'd read that at public events, Pegasus sometimes wore an eyepatch, but he'd never been wearing it the few times Seto had seen him. Hair only served so well as a shield, and every so often Seto caught a glimpse of that cavity. Once had been enough; every time Pegasus looked at him it was all he could notice anymore.

Pegasus smiled, as if he knew what Seto was thinking, what he was seeing. "You know what they say, Kaiba-boy." His voice was quiet, almost gentle. "Even the gods must bow to fate."

"_You're not a god."_

Seto might as well have been made of ice, he'd gone that brittle_. _Behind the glass, a slender eyebrow shot up, but whatever witty reply Seto was expecting never came. Pegasus was speechless.

It was just as well, he thought, reaching over the desk to gather up his paperwork. He didn't know what he'd hoped to achieve, coming here like this, but he'd been insane to think a madman would listen to reason.

He was halfway through the door before he remembered.

"Battle City," he said. "Did you watch it?"

Pegasus looked baffled by the apparent non sequitur. "Certainly. The footage is everywhere—"

"Watch it again," Seto said.

He slammed the door behind him as he left, not bothering to wait for a response.

* * *

"You're not being fair," Mokuba told him. "Why should he want to run a company after everything that happened?"

"Because it's _his_," Seto growled, drawing a wide black flourish through a particularly inefficient idea submitted by the R&D department. He'd been reviewing patents all day, which always put him in a foul mood. People had no sense of _elegance_. "Why are you defending him, anyway?"

"Why are you?"

Seto's pen hovered over the page. "I'm _not_."

Mokuba rolled his eyes.

* * *

The subject didn't come up again for nearly a week. Seto had stayed home long enough to eat breakfast with Mokuba—or rather, to sit at the table and read the paper while Mokuba ate breakfast. The stories might have been fictions, but knowing what the world _hoped_ to be true was nearly as useful as knowing the truth itself. Seto was halfway through an inane political editorial when Mokuba said his name in an oddly strained tone.

"What are you doing?" Seto asked, flicking the paper closed. Mokuba shook his head and grinned, pointing with his spoon at Seto's hands.

"Back page," he said. "Check it out."

Seto turned the paper around. It's the gossip page, an extension of the life and style section he always read but never paid attention to. Stories and photos littered the page, but the feature Mokuba wanted him to look at was immediately apparent. A candid photo of Pegasus himself, clad in overlarge sunglasses and a monstrosity of a straw hat, whispering something to the security guard at his shoulder.

The caption read "Talk about exotic holidays! Gaming icon Pegasus Crawford spotted in Cairo airport!"

There was a moment where he was too surprised to react. Of course, no reaction was suitable for the mix of irritated confusion he was feeling, except possibly what Seto ended up saying.

"The hell is he doing?"

Mokuba had gotten out of his chair so he could look over Seto's shoulder. "Cairo sounds fun. You think this means he's making new cards?"

"He doesn't need to go to Egypt for that," Seto said, snapping the paper shut. "Nothing there but a bunch of fanatics. He's just fooling around."

There space between Mokuba's eyebrows crinkled, his brother studying the photo as if it were a puzzle to be solved and not the obvious publicity stunt it was. "I don't know…" he said, leaning closer. "He looks…cheerful."

"He's not even looking at the camera."

Mokuba glanced up at Seto, his expression clearing into what would have been a smirk if not for the self-conscious way he broke eye contact half a second later. "Yeah," he said. "That's what I mean."

* * *

At the end of December Seto was holding a conference call with his market analysts when Mokuba barged into his office, his arms full of envelopes, his expression so positively _gleeful _Seto had to check the calendar to make sure it wasn't Christmas all over again.

Mokuba dumped the envelopes on Seto's desk, ignoring the work already spread out across the surface, and stood back, hands on his hips, lips split into a shameless grin. "Guess what came in the mail today?"

"I'm on the phone."

"Not anymore," Mokuba said, practically singing as he whirled around the desk and reached over his brother's lap to end the call.

Seto kept the receiver pressed against his ear even after the dial tone started to buzz, trying to decide if it would be better to scold his brother or congratulate him. Mokuba didn't seem to care which one it would end up being; he lifted an envelope and pushed it into Seto's face.

As soon as he saw the return address, Seto forgot all about the phone call.

There were three envelopes in total, three of them all identical in shape and size, but inside each one was a collection of artwork: most of them were scans of completed cards, but there were also photographs of completed paintings, half-completed paintings, and, in a few cases, mere sketches. All of them were accompanied by complete charts for each folder's contents: rarity values, archetype lists, effect charts. There was the dragon booster he asked for, a new tomb-keeper archetype, and even half a dozen miscellaneous high-level spellcasters.

In the fourth envelope there was only a detailed invoice, listing a steep price per hour of work, travel expenses, rush rates. There was an additional, even steeper fine for "consultation fees", and below the total, someone had added a last-minute note in an elegant scrawling cursive.

_If you can change fate, you can afford this_.

Mokuba waited a few seconds, but, as always, his usual tact eventually came to surface.

"You know, it scares the secretaries when you laugh like that."

Seto immediately forwarded the designs to his marketing staff. He ordered the bill paid in full.

* * *

By the end of the month, Industrial Illusions had printed the cards and shipped them to KaibaCorp, where they were packaged and set aside. They wouldn't be needed until KaibaLand's opening ceremony.

The papers spread rumors of Industrial Illusions launching a new line of cards, but Seto didn't care about those. He was busy with plans of his own. The park wouldn't open until early summer, but Seto's shareholders had wanted a launch party _now_, and he could hardly deny them, especially when Mokuba added his voice to the mix.

Due to the weather and the size of the guest list, KaibaCorp hosted the party in a local convention center. It was black tie at Seto's insistence, hosted by a local celebrity at Mokuba's. As major contributors to the park, the executive board of Industrial Illusions was on the guest list, but still Seto never expected to actually see Pegasus there.

Yet there he was, glass of wine in hand, standing in a corner and chatting animately with someone Seto vaguely recognized as one of the lower-level roller coaster architects. He had no doubt Pegasus knew where he was—Seto had a tendency to dominate public spaces—neither of them made any move to approach the other. Seto was too preoccupied with the mobs of business associates and employees and shareholders that kept mobbing him for attention. He wouldn't have been here at all if Mokuba hadn't insisted on it, although his brother had also made the very astute point that the accomplishment they were celebrating was _Seto_'s—it would be bad form to not make an appearance.

It wasn't until Mokuba's celebrity host-some television personality Seto had never heard of-started a lengthy monologue that Seto could extricate himself from the crowd and find some space. He was halfway to the doors when he spotted Pegasus.

Seto didn't know whose idea it had been, but someone in event planning had taken the best and most recognizable pieces of concept art and made a mini art gallery along on wall. Seto had thought it redundant; most of those same paintings had been in the company lobby all winter, but no one had asked _him_, which meant Mokuba had signed off on the idea behind his back.

Pegasus stood in front of the Blue Eyes White Dragon painting, and Seto found his path diverging from his destination. Pegasus saw him coming immediately and raised a glass in tribute once Seto was within hearing range. "Lovely shindig, Kaiba-boy," he said. "You certainly know how to throw a party."

"I didn't plan it," Seto said, stopping a good five feet away. "And you aren't enjoying it."

"Neither are you," Pegasus said lightly. "But then again, you never knew how to have fun, did you?" He took a sip of his wine. "And yet you play games for a living. Don't you find it curious?"

"No."

Pegasus glanced at him, smiled, made some sort of tutting noise as he turned back to the painting. "You know," he said conversationally, taking a sip of wine. "I'm finding myself quite taken with this. Is there a chance—"

"Definitely not."

"You sure about that, Kaiba-boy? I'm sure I could make it worth your while." When Pegasus turned, he saw Seto's expression and laughed.

"I can have you thrown out of here."

"Wouldn't that be a sight?" Pegasus said agreeably. "You shouldn't be so serious, my boy. It's a party, after all." Seeing his cup was empty, he turned to wave another one down from a passing waiter.

Seto folded his arms across his chest. "My company doesn't tolerate public drunkenness from its employees."

Pegasus glanced at him, eyebrow raised, but all he said was "Excellent policy."

"You should consider implementing a similar one."

Pegasus started to laugh. Seto gave up on holding a logical conversation and stared across the room, scanning the crowd. From where he was standing, he could see Mokuba, sweet-talking two wives of notable shareholders. They made brief eye contact; Mokuba raised his eyebrows and grinned.

The waiter had come back with a tray of champagne glasses. After Pegasus took one, the waiter offered one to Seto, who frowned at him until he took the hint and went away.

"Did you know I'm quite the romantic?" Pegasus said. "Can't resist a love story."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

Pegasus was staring at the painting again. "Yes you do," he said, speaking with the kind of condescending patience an older sibling uses when he explains just _why _there's no such thing as Santa Claus.

Seto finally saw who he was looking for. He pointed across the room, ignoring the disapproving frowns of a few nearby onlookers. "You see that woman?" he said. "Haruka Satou."

When Pegasus glanced at Haruka, than gave a baffled shrug, Seto dropped his arm. "The artist," he said flatly.

Pegasus' expression cleared, and he took a delicate sip of champagne, taking his time to reply. "Well, well," he said. "It seems you've learned to share after all."

"She won't work for you."

"We'll see. How much did you say you were paying her?"

"More than you can afford."

"Oh my, really?" Pegasus was already starting to cross the room, but he paused long enough to smirk at Kaiba over his shoulder. "It's fortunate for me you're so charmless," he said. "Money can't buy a welcoming work environment."

He swanned across the room, ignoring Seto's grumbled reply. When he turned to leave, he found the waiter back at his shoulder, apologetically holding out the champagne tray.

"Your brother's orders, sir."

Seto took the glass, turned to look for his brother. Across the room, Mokuba held out both hands in a thumbs-up gesture. Seto nodded stiffly back, then sniffed at the glass in his hand.

Well, he thought. No harm celebrating a job well done.

**End**


End file.
